Lambertella (Rutstroemiaceae, Helotiales) from Northern Thailand

ABSTRACT

During our surveys for discomycetes from 2019 to 2021 in forests and plantations in northern Thailand, several lambertella-like specimens were found. Morphological observation and BLAST search confirmed that seven newly collected specimens belong to Lambertella. Further phylogenetic analyses using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analysis based on combined the internal transcribed spacer region of rDNA (ITS), large subunit region of 28S rRNA (LSU), small subunit region of 18S rRNA (SSU) and RNA polymerase II gene (RPB2) sequence data and morphological examination coupled with chemical reactions confirmed seven Lambertella species. Lambertella aurantiaca and L. himalayensis were established as new geographical and host records, and the other five specimens, L. chiangraiensis, L. fusoidea, L. phanensis, L. sessilis and L. takensis, were introduced as novel species. The highlight of the current study is the contribution of the morphological description for Lambertella aurantiaca since its introduction in 1964, emending the morphological criteria for Lambertella sensu stricto, and providing sequence data for all Lambertella species described in the current study.

KEYWORDS:

• Ascomycota
• discomycetes
• Leotiomycetes
• phylogenetic analysis
• saprobes

Acknowledgements

We are immensely grateful to Mr. Kriangkrai Chaiphicet, the Director of the Doi Inthanon National Park, and all his staffs for their immense help during our collecting trips to explore different areas of the national park in search of discomycetes. K. W. Thilini Chethana would like to thank the National Research Council of Thailand for providing permission to conduct research in the Doi Inthanon National Park, Thailand (No. 0402-2703, 0402-2803 and 0402-2804). Anis S. Lestari thanks Shaun Pennycook for the species name suggestions.

Author contribution

Concept, methodology (collection, lab work, taxonomy, tree analysis), writing – original draft: 611 Anis S. Lestari; Funding acquisition, writing – review and editing, supervision: K.W. Thilini Chethana.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in NCBI repository system at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ and accession numbers are given in Table 1.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Mae Fah Luang University [grant number 641A01002], entitled ‘Assessing the taxonomy of Discomycetes and plant pathogenic fungi in Doi Inthanon National Park, Thailand’, Mae Fah Luang Partial Scholarship for the doctoral degree programme and Mushroom Research Foundation. The authors would like to thank the National Research Council of Thailand for the project entitled ‘Comparison of diversity and biogeographical distribution of Ascomycetous fungi from two protected areas in Turkey and Thailand’ [Project no. P-19-52624].